Columbia Composers

Columbia Composers is organized by and for the graduate music composition students at Columbia University.

Columbia Composers is a student-run organization supporting the creation and performance of new works by graduate students enrolled in Columbia University’s Doctoral Composition Program. Each year we organize four or five concerts in various venues throughout New York City, attracting a mix of student and outside attendees thereby broadening the visibility of the our composers both individually and collectively. We have collaborated with such ensembles as the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), JACK quartet, Talea, Wet Ink, Yarn/Wire, and many New York freelance musicians. Our activities are made possible by the generous support of the Alice M. Ditson and the Fritz Reiner Funds. For more information and updates on our programming, please join our mailing list.

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Composers

DMA Student in Composition

Katherine Balch’s music has been performed by a variety of ensembles in the United States and abroad, including the Albany Symphony Orchestra, American Composer’s Orchestra, FLUX quartet, Ensemble Intercontemporain, American Modern Ensemble, New York Youth Symphony, Yale Camerata, Yale Philharmonia, ICE, Alea III, Antico Moderno, and the New York Virtuoso Singers, among others.

DMA Student in Composition

Ashkan Behzadi (b.1983) is an Iranian composer residing in New York City. He is a graduate of McGill University in composition and music theory. Prior to this he also earned a bachelor's degree in architecture from Tehran University. He has studied compositions with Alireza Mashayekhi, Chris Paul Harman, Brian Cherney, Philippe Leroux, Fred Lerdahl, George Lewis and Georg Friedrich Haas.

DMA Student in Composition

David Bird is a composer and multimedia artist based in New York City. He is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and currently studies composition at Columbia University. His work explores the dramatic potential of electroacoustic and mixed media environments, often highlighting the relationships between technology and the individual.

Core Lecturer, Music Humanities

Taylor Brook is a composer of concert music for large and small ensembles, both acoustically as well as using electronics and new technologies as well as commercial and production music for film, games, and television. Brook also writes music for video produced by visual artists, and music for theater and dance. Described as “gripping” and “engrossing” by the New York Times, his compositions have won numerous awards and prizes.

DMA Student in Composition

Stylianos Dimou is a Greek composer born in Thessaloniki in 1988. He began music studies at the Municipal Conservatory of Thessaloniki, degrees in Music Harmony (May 2005), Counterpoint (May 2008) and diploma in accordion (June 2010). He has pursued advanced studies in composition with Prof. Christos Samaras at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Department of Music Studies (Greece, 2011, MM in Composition) and he has been nominated as a Fulbright Scholar continuing his Graduate Studies at the Eastman School of Music (USA, 2012, MA in composition).

Graduate Student

DMA Student in Composition

William Dougherty is an American composer whose works have been performed internationally by ensembles including the Orchestre National de Lorraine (Metz), the Lemanic Modern Ensemble (Geneva), the London Chorus (London), Ensemble Phoenix (Basel), the Mivos Quartet (New York), and Talea Ensemble (New York).

DMA Student in Composition

Louis Goldford is a composer hailing from St. Louis. Recent performances include those by the JACK Quartet, Ensemble Dal Niente, Ensemble Modelo62, and the Meitar Ensemble. His works have recently been featured at June in Buffalo, International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), the Northwestern University New Music Conference (NUNC!), Contemporary Encounters with Meitar Ensemble and members of Ensemble Modern in Tel Aviv, and elsewhere. He was recently named the winner of the 2017 Suzhou (Chou's) International Commission Competition.

Graduate Student

Saad Haddad (b. 1992) is a composer of orchestral, chamber, vocal, and electroacoustic music who achieves a “remarkable fusion of idioms” (New York Times), most notably in his work exploring the disparate qualities inherent in Western art music and Middle Eastern musical tradition.

DMA Student in Composition

Vicente Hansen Atria (b. 1992, Santiago, Chile) is a New York-based composer and drummer whose work traverses the continuum between improvisation and composition. Past, recent, and ongoing collaborators include the Bozzini Quartet, counter(induction, Daedalus Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, TAK, and Wet Ink. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts at Columbia University, where he has studied with Fred Lerdahl, George Lewis, and Georg Haas. He graduated from the Columbia Undergraduate Scholars Program as a Kluge Scholar, as he studied philosophy under Taylor Carman.

DMA student in Composition

Martin Hiendl is a composer and performer from Berlin, born and raised in the Bavarian Forest in the south-east of Germany. Teachers/mentors were Beat Furrer in Frankfurt and Roger Reynolds in San Diego. Martin focuses on interdisciplinary performances within a collaborative practice, composition within the realm of non-notated music and durational performances. He is currently writing an opera installation for the musikprotokoll Graz 2016/2017.

DMA Student in Composition

Yair Klartag was born in 1985 in Israel. He began studying Piano at the age of 12 and commenced his composition studies at the age of 15. He received his Bachelor's degree in Composition under the instruction of Ruben Seroussi at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, Tel-Aviv University, graduating in 2010. He continued his composition studies, obtaining his Master's degree in 2012 at the Basel Musikhochschule with Georg Friedrich Haas and Erik Oña. At present he is a doctoral candidate in composition at Columbia University.

DMA student in Composition

Mary Kouyoumdjian is a composer with projects ranging from concert works to multimedia collaborations and film scores. As a first generation Armenian-American and having come from a family directly affected by the Lebanese Civil War and Armenian Genocide, she uses a sonic pallet that draws on her heritage, interest in music as documentary, and background in experimental composition to progressively blend the old with the new.

DMA student in Composition

Taiwanese composer Shih-Wei Lo creates music that involves acoustic instruments, voice, digital media, mechatronic art, and interdisciplinary collaboration, among others. His work is often informed by the diverse articulations of time and space in various domains such as art, literature, culture, and politics, and may be viewed as a process of transfiguring these into music, providing the audience with a contemplative medium.

DMA, Composition 2018

The music of composer, oboist and installation artist Sky Macklay (b. 1988) explores bold contrasts, audible processes, humor, and the physicality of sound. Her works have been performed by ensembles such as ICE, Yarn/Wire, Wet Ink Ensemble, Mivos Quartet, Dal Niente, The Da Capo Chamber Players, and Le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne. Her piece for the Lexington Symphony was the winner of the 2013 Leo Kaplan award, the top prize in the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards.

Graduate Student

DMA Student in Composition

Emily Praetorius is a composer from Ojai, CA. She holds an MM in composition from Manhattan School of Music (2014) and a BM in clarinet performance and composition from the University of Redlands (2012). Her past teachers include Susan Botti and Anthony Suter with additional instruction from Reiko Fueting.

DMA Student in Composition

John Rot is a composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher based in New York City. His work challenges established standards of musical form and rhythm, employing unique conceptualizations of division and simultaneity to suggest new approaches to music’s most important parameter: duration. His music has been performed by the JACK Quartet, Mivos Quartet, Talea Ensemble, Tak Ensemble, Ensemble Court-Circuit, loadbang, andPlay duo, the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, and a number of soloists across the country specializing in the performance of new music.

DMA Student in Composition

DMA Student in Composition

Onur Yıldırım (b. 1985) is a Turkish composer currently based in New York, where he pursues doctoral studies in composition at Columbia University. His music has been performed at festivals such as Impuls (Graz), June in Buffalo, the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance Practice (SICPP), and as part of Unerhörte Musik (Berlin) and Jeunesse (Vienna) series. Performers of his music include Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Interface, Callithumpian Consort and Hezarfen Ensemble.

Graduate Student

Bethany Younge is an American composer of both acoustic and electroacoustic works with extensive collaborative experience with artists from other disciplines. Many of her acoustic works seek to mimic both speech and sound poetry with instruments while also dissecting words to reveal individual phonemes, illuminating a world embedded with complex semiotical relations between the spoken word and what is interpreted to be "music." Her explorations in speech have led her to find her words, her voice, and create compelling situations where performers may do the same.

DMA student in Composition

Alumni

Victor Adán’s first musical experiments took place during the late 1980s, when he began playing on an upright piano and using a computer. From the beginning, both machines served him well as musical instruments. Adán then discovered the uncompromising music of composer Julio Estrada and, in 1997, he joined Estrada’s deschooling Music Creation Lab at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. In 2005 he earned an MS in media technology and digital communications from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 2010 a DMA from Columbia University.

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Ramin Amir Arjomand is an Iranian-American composer, pianist, conductor, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. His composition teachers include Stephen Jaffe, Gheorghe Costinescu, Fred Lerdahl, Jonathan Kramer, and Tristan Murail. His concert music has been commissioned and/or performed by Speculum Musicae, So Percussion Ensemble, the New York Virtuoso Singers, the Cassatt Quartet, TAK Ensemble, the Columbia Collegium Musicum, and numerous independent ensembles and soloists in venues throughout the United States.

Christopher Bailey received his DMA in composition from Columbia in 2002. He released a CD, Immolation Ritual, in 2010, and in 2014 has had several pieces performed around the world.For more information, see his website here.

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Carl Christian Bettendorf (DMA, Composition, 2009) is a New York-based composer/conductor. Born in Hamburg, Germany, he studied composition with Hans-Jürgen von Bose and Wolfgang Rihm in Munich and Karlsruhe before moving to New York, where he received his doctorate in Composition from Columbia University studying under Tristan Murail.

Born in Milan, holding dual Italian-Swiss citizenships, Oscar Bianchi completed degrees in composition, choir conducting and electronic music at the Giuseppe Verdi conservatory of Milan. He pursued studies in composition taking part in master programs such as at IRCAM - Centre Pompidou and with a doctoral degree at Columbia University in New York.

Hayes Biggs is currently a member of C4 (Choral Composer/Conductor Collective). From 1991-2001 he was Associate Editor at C. F. Peters Corporation and he has been on the faculty of Manhattan School of Music since 1992. He is a professional choral singer in the New York City area and has sung with such distinguished ensembles as the Florilegium Chamber Choir, the Gregg Smith Singers, Musica Sacra, the New Calliope Singers, the New York Virtuoso Singers, the Pro Arte Singers, and Toby Twining Music.He was born in Huntsville, Alabama and raised in Helena, Arkansas.

Dr. David Birchfield is the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of SMALLab Learning. He has led the SMALLab research and development effort since 2005. In that role he has managed a multi-million dollar budget, working with government agencies, foundations, industry partners, schools, and museums.Dr. Birchfield received his Doctorate in Music from Columbia University. He has a background in digital media and performance. His research focuses on real-time interactivity and experiential media system design as applied to creative and educational spaces.

Marcus Bittencourt is an American-Brazilian composer and pianist born in Garland-TX, USA. He studied music with composers such as Willy Correa de Oliveira, Fred Lerdahl, Joe Dubiel, Jonathan Kramer, and Tristan Murail, and Computer Music with Brad Garton and Thanassis Rikakis. As a composer, he is prolific both as an instrumental and an electroacoustic composer and his music has been played in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Brazil.

New York City music-maker Kitty Brazelton loves to do everything: sing, play in bands, improvise, compose operas, symphonies, music for chamber, church and choir, teach, write, translate ancient texts, think in four languages, study, watch, listen, and learn as much as she can about the world around her. Music is her passion since eighteen when she joined the campus acid rock band, discovered medieval plainchant, radical free jazz improvisation and the ascetic serialism of the mid-20th-c.

Dr. Bryan is currently a Visiting Fellow for 2014-2015 at the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University.

Courtney Bryan, a native of New Orleans, La, is “a pianist and composer of panoramic interests” (New York Times). Her music ranges from solo works to large ensembles in the new music and jazz idioms, film scores, and collaborations with dancers, visual artists, writers, and actors. She performs around the New York area, and is the Director of the Institute of Sacred Music at Bethany Baptist Church of Newark, NJ.

Christopher Buchenholz is an American composer whose orchestral, chamber, vocal, and piano works have been most favorably received in the United States and abroad. His compositions are best known for their extraordinary blend of traditional musical sound worlds, relentless counterpoint, intricate rhythmic aggregations, and innovative harmonic motion. His music has been described as "meta-tonal," incorporating tonal structures and tonally influenced relationships within fundamentally twelve-tone designs. Mr.

Andrew Byrne is an Australian composer based in New York. His music has been described as "beautifully constructed, tautly focused music" (Fanfare Magazine), "a delirious swoon: somehow lush and minimal, soothing and ominous" (Studio 360, WNYC Radio) and "Imagine Ligeti's Etudes having had a little too much to drink with Conlon Nancarrow as the designated driver" (Gramophone Magazine).He is the Artistic Director of Symphony Space, one of New York's pre-eminent performance venues, as of September 2014. Previously, Dr.

Callaway began her musical training in Baltimore under Grace Newsom Cushman and continued at Smith College with Alvin Etler. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, studying with George Crumb, Jack Beeson, and George Edwards. Her compositions have been broadcast on both coasts of the U.S., and she is the subject of a documentary produced by Swedish Radio.

Edmund Campion joined the composition faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1996. He is also Co-Director at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) at Berkeley.A native of Dallas, Texas, Edmund Campion completed his doctoral study in composition at Columbia University, and spent several years in France working with Gerard Grisey. In 1993 he was invited to study at IRCAM where he composed LOSING TOUCH for vibraphone and tape (visit EDMUND CAMPION at IRCAM) (Billaudot Editions, Paris).

Core Lecturer, Music Humanities

Mahir Cetiz is a Core Lecturer in Music Humanities. Born in Ankara, Turkey in 1977, he received his undergraduate degree in music performance in 1998 from Ankara State Conservatory, where he studied cello, piano and composition. Following his undergraduate studies, Cetiz earned his master's degree in composition from the University of Memphis (U.S.A.) and in conducting from Hacettepe University (Turkey). In the year 2000, he won a scholarship from British Council, which enabled him to continue his studies with Anthony Gilbert, at "Royal Northern College of Music".

Dr. Chen Yi is the Lorena Searcy Cravens/ Millsap/ Missouri Distinguished Professor of Composition at the University of Misouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance.As a prolific composer who blends Chinese and Western traditions, transcending cultural and musical boundaries, Dr. Chen Yi is the recipient of the prestigious Charles Ives Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001.

Paul Clift (b. 1978), 2014 DMA in Composition, is an Australian composer based in Basel, Switzerland. His music often attempts to make abstract associations with a variety of concepts such as linguistics, modernist literature & painting, cognitive phenomena, and extra-European musical traditions. Paul’s music has been performed by ensembles such as the JACK Quartet, ICE, Argento, Mivos Quartet, L’instant Donné, Either/Or, Contrechamps, Proton, Neofonia, Novel Ensemble Modern & Klangforum Wien, and by esteemed soloists such as Kobe Van Cauwenberghe, Olivia Steimel, William Lang, Patrick Stadler, Geoff Landmann, as well as his wife, Slovenian flautist Anja Clift.

Joshua Cody received his bachelor’s degree in music composition from Northwestern University, and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Columbia University. Joshua is a composer and filmmaker living in New York City.

His first book, [sic]: A Memoir, was published by W.W. Norton & Company in 2011.

Greg D'Alessio is an Associate Professor of music at Cleveland State University, where he is alsocoordinator of the electronic and computer music studios.He has received numerous honors and fellowships in recognition of his work as a composer,including a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship,The Aaron Copland Prize, The Cleveland Arts Prize, Two Ohio Arts Council Awards, A Fellowship fromThe Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC), and The Board of Director's Prize from theSociety for Electro-Acoustic Music (SEAMUS).Bio courtesy of his

Francis Goelet Assistant Professor of Composition

Zosha Di Castri is a Canadian composer/pianist living in New York. She was appointed as Assistant Professor of Music at Columbia in 2014, after completing her DMA in the Department. Her work (which has been performed in Canada, the US, and Europe) extends beyond purely concert music, including projects with electronics, installations, and collaborations with video and dance. Her latest work, Serafiniana, for solo amplified violin, amplified harp, orchestra, and electronics was premiered in Toronto by Esprit Orchestra in May.

R. Luke DuBois is Co-Director and Associate Professor of Integrated Digital Media at NYU. He had a survey exhibition, "R. Luke DuBois - Now," at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. He holds a DMA in Composition from Columbia University.

Jason Eckardt is an Associate Professor in the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College. Jason Eckardt played guitar in jazz and metal bands until, upon first hearing the music of Webern, he immediately devoted himself to composition. Since then, his music has been influenced by his interests in perceptual complexity, psychological and physical dimensions of performance, and self-organizing processes in the natural world.

Brian Field began his musical endeavors at age eight with the study of piano, and began his first serious compositional efforts at sixteen. He earned his undergraduate degree in music and English literature from Connecticut College, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa. At Connecticut, he studied composition with Noel Zahler, piano with the Polish pedagogue Zosia Jazinovich, organ with John Anthony, and harpsichord/figured-bass realization with Linda Skernick.Devoting himself to composition, Mr.

Joshua Fineberg is an Associate Professor of Music, Composition and Theory at Boston University. He has won various prizes, fellowships, and scholarships, including ASCAP; Ars Electronica; Boris and Edna Rapoport Prize; Arnold Salop Prize; yearly ASCAP Awards; and the Randolph S. Rothschild Award. Commissions from major international institutions and performers, including Fromm Foundation, Robert Levin, French Ministry of Culture, l'IRCAM, Marianne Gythfeldt, Radio France, American Pianists Association, Ensemble Court-Circuit, Ensemble l"Itineraire, CCMIX, Dominique My, and Ensemble FA.

Jason Freeman is Professor of Music at Georgia Tech. His artistic practice and scholarly research focus on using technology to engage diverse audiences in collaborative, experimental, and accessible musical experiences. He also develops educational interventions in K-12, university, and MOOC environments that broaden and increase engagement in STEM disciplines through authentic integrations of music and computing.

Dr. Elaine Thomazi-Freitas is a composer and media artist. She is a senior Lecturer in the Sir John Cass Faculty of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University. She received has a DMA in Composition from Columbia University and a master's in music from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She had undergone an internship in Music Documentation at IRCAM (Institute of Research and Coordination Acoustics/Music) in Paris/France. With an initial background in music, her trajectory had a further achievement with the inclusion of the visual element.

Composer Joel Phillip Friedman's natural creative impulse is to work across genres, and to compose music that is equally informed by his classical training and his engagement with the vernacular. His varied portfolio includes work for small and large ensembles, musical theater, opera, dance, film, jazz, and rock.

Michel Galante is the conductor of the Argento Chamber Ensemble. He has performed as principal, guest, and assistant conductor with orchestras and ensembles in the US, Canada, and Europe. His composition awards include Hertz, Fulbright, and Mellon fellowships, and prizes from ASCAP and the Composer's Guild. He holds a DMA in composition from Columbia University, and is the director of the orchestra program at The College of New Jersey.

Ge Gan-ru, described in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as 'China's first avant-garde composer', is regarded as one of the most original composers of his generation. His music is known for its immediately identifiable individualism and unique sound.By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ge was already known in China as the first composer to employ contemporary and avant-garde techniques, which were prohibited at the time. He was criticized for his individualism which was directly at odds with the prevailing ideology.

Douglas Geers is Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Computer Music at the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music.Geers is a composer living in New York City. Geers specializes in electro-acoustic and multimedia musical works, including various combinations of live musicians, actors, video, dancers, and computer-generated sounds.Geers teaches on the the faculty of the City University of New York, where he is an Associate Professor of Music Composition and Director of the Center for Computer Music at the Brooklyn College Conservatory. He is also a member of the CUNY Graduate

Dr. Michelle Green Willner has a B.M. degree from the University of Toronto and her M.A. and D.M.A. degrees in Music (Composition) from Columbia University. Dr. Green Willner’s awards include five ASCAP Special Awards, two ASCAP Foundation Grants to Young Composers, Community Relations Council Grant, Brian M. Israel Prize (Society for New Music), SOCAN’s Serge Garant Award, Shalshelet’s 6th International Festival of New Jewish Liturgical Music (2016), and the WORD Grant 2016: The Bruce Geller Memorial Prize. Dr.

The American composer Mark Gustavson was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1959 and grew up in the Chicago suburbs. He began studying clarinet at eight and composing when he was sixteen. In high school he studied at the Music Institute of Chicago.

Sampo Haapamäki (born February 3, 1979) has composed a double concerto, two concertos, three chamber orchestra works, compositions for mixed choir and tape, violin and live electronics, concert band, big band, and chamber music. Haapamäki had a composition recital in Musica nova Helsinki festival in 2006. Haapamäki was the Tapiola Sinfonietta's Composer-in-Residence for the season 2011-12.

Alec Hall completed his doctorate in composition in 2016. He also holds an MA in composition from the University of California, San Diego, and a B.M in composition and violin performance from McGill University.

John Halle is the Director of Studies in Music Theory and Practice at Bard College. He joined the faculty of Bard after serving for seven years in the music department at Yale University. Active as both a composer and theorist, recent compositions have been performed by the Meridian Arts Ensemble, the Cygnus Ensemble, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the Locrian Ensemble, Fulcrum Point, flutists Ransom Wilson and Tara Helen O'Connor, and the Now Ensemble, among others.He is a founding member of Common Sense, a composers' collective which will release its third CD on the Albany label.

JULIE HARTING has been composing music since the early 1980's, and has written over two dozen original compositions, including several orchestral pieces, three string quartets, songs, solo pieces and various chamber ensemble pieces. Her body of compositions is diverse, demonstrating ample skill and talent in a comprehensive array of musical forms.

Mara Helmuth (Margaret Mathilda Helmuth) composes music often involving the computer, and creates multimedia and software for composition and improvisation. Her recordings include Sound Collaborations, (CDCM v.36, Centaur CRC 2903), Implements of Actuation (Electronic Music Foundation EMF 023), Sounding Out! (Everglade) and works included on Open Space CD 16 and the 50th Anniversary University of Illinois Experimental Music Studios commemorative collection. Her work has been performed internationally at conferences, festivals and arts spaces.

Rozalie Hirs is a contemporary Dutch composer and poet. Her poetry and music are lyrical as well as experimental. The principal concerns of her work are the adventure of listening, reading, and the imagination. Her music consists of vocal, orchestral, and electronic compositions. She often combines traditional instruments with electronic sounds.

Huck Hodge is Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of Washington. He previously taught Compositon at Columbia University in New York City, where he earned his MA and DMA studying with the noted French and American composers Tristan Murail and Fred Lerdahl. Prior to this, he studied Music Theory and Computer Music at the Staatliche Hochschule fur Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, Germany, where his teachers included Georg Wotzer and Marco Stroppa. During this time, his studies were supported with funding from the Andrew W.

Paul Damian Hogan is a composer living in New York City. He was recently nominated for an Emmy award for his score to Birders: The Central Park Effect. He earned his doctorate in music composition from Columbia University in 2007, then decided to write music for film and television. He has composed scores for the films Shored Up, Birders: The Central Park Effect (HBO), Sahkanaga and Must Read After My Death. He has been making records under the names Paul Damian Hogan the Third, Ta Da, and Frances for the past 7 years as well.

Damon Holzborn (DMA, Composition, 2013) is a Brooklyn-based musician, new media artist, and software developer. As a musician, he is an improviser and composer who works primarily with electronics. In performance he uses custom software, traditional effects, and interactive processes. Holzborn has long relied on instruments that he develops for use in his own compositions and performances, creating software that produces dynamic instruments that are particularly effective for improvisational performance.

Daniel Iglesia creates music and media for humans, computers, and broad interactions of the two. His works have taken the form of concert works for instruments and electronics, live audio and video performance, generative and interactive installations, and collaborations with many disciplines such as theater and dance. He is an accomplished technologist, and brings notions of computational aesthetics both into correlated electronic media and human performance.

John Paul Ito is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Carnegie Mellon School of Music.He received an SB in music from MIT, an MM in viola performance from Boston University, and a PhD in music theory from Columbia University.His main area of research is meter and hypermeter and their connections with cognition, performance, and the history of musical style. Other interests include cognitive linguistics, human movement science, methodology and epistemology, and Christian theology. He has presented papers at venues including the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognitio

Edward Jacobs teaches at East Carolina University, where his activities have also included the founding and direction of the North Carolina NewMusic Initiative (formerly the NewMusic@ECU Festival) begun in March, 2001.Jacobs began playing violin at age 8, but abandoned that at age 11--upon hearing a friend's jazz quartet--in favor of the saxophone.

The works of composer/guitarist Bryan Jacobs have been performed in the US and internationally by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, Wet Ink Ensemble, Meitar Ensemble, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Talea Ensemble, the pianist Xenia Pestova and more. He has received awards and commissions from La Muse en Circuit, The American Academy of Arts and Letters, Bourges International Electroacoustic Music competition, MATA, Centre for Computational Musicology and Computer Music, and RTÉ Lyric FM, and his work is available on a recording put out by La Muse en Circuit.

Don Jamison was born in 1956 and raised in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Haverford College with a major in music, and received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Columbia University in 1992. Don and family moved to Vermont in 1989 when his wife, Christina Root, joined the faculty at St. Michael's College. In 1998, an invitation from the Warebrook Contemporary Music Festival to write a set of pieces for Marshfield-based Village Harmony led Don to continuing adventures with singing.

Faidros Kavallaris was born in Lapithos, Cyprus, in 1950. He has studied architecture and music. From an early age he showed an interest in composing, painting, poetry and ancient Greek drama. While still a student in London he writes music for Aristofanis's comedy "The Birds" (1971), composes "Woodwind Quintet" (1972) and organizes his first concert comprising his early songs (1973).

Brahim Kerkour is an Anglo-Moroccan composer based in London. His work is situated within a musical philosophy of sensory experience. At the heart of his approach is a commitment to the research of sound materials and their distribution within microscopic transformations of kinetic, tactile and spatial criteria. His music, conceived as a choreography of sound organisms, aims to sculpt spaces for personal experiences in listening. He works with both acoustic and electronic instruments. Brahim was appointed Manchester Camerata/Sound and Music Embedded Composer-in-Residence for the 2011-1

Durban-born composer Andile Khumalo studied composition at Columbia University under the guidance of Tristan Murail and Fabien Lévy. His former teachers include Jürgen Bräuninger, Urlich Süße, Fabio Nieder and Marco Stroppa with whom he studied in Stuttgart (Germany) where he got his Masters in Composition.

Khumalo has attended masterclasses in Darmstadt (Germany), Fondation Royaumont (France), and Stuttgart with leading composers of our time such as Salvatore Sciarrino, Stefano Gervasoni, Brian Ferneyhough, and Isabel Mundry.

Composer and Flutist Geoffrey Kidde is currently an Associate Professor of Music at Manhattanville College, where he teaches Music Theory and Music Technology.Kidde has written music for a wide variety of media: two operas; an orchestral song cycle; an electronic tape mime theater work based on Kafka's Metamorphosis; film scores; works for instruments with electronic tape; and orchestral, vocal, choral and chamber music. Mr.

Steven Kinigstein is a Musician, Writer, Producer, and Educator whose mission to the growth of music education gets its momentum toward the future through the use of advances made in the 20th and 21st centuries, and is propelled by the techniques of the great masters of past.

Michael Klingbeil is an Assistant Professor of Music at Yale C2 the Creative Consilience of Computing and the Arts. He joined the faculty at Yale in 2006. Michael Klingbeil is a composer who is active in contemporary concert music, electroacoustic music, and computer music research. He completed his formal training at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, and Columbia University. Principal teachers include Tristan Murail, Heinrich Taube, Gary Lee Nelson, P.Q. Phan and James Beauchamp. His works have been played in both the U.S.

Professor Rhee Kyung-mee teaches composition at the College of Music of Hanyang University. She received her B.A. (1985) and M.A. (1989) from Seoul National University, and her DMA in Musical Arts (1995) from Columbia University.

Alumna

Anne LeBaron’s compositions embrace an exotic array of subjects encompassing vast reaches of space and time, ranging from the mysterious Singing Dune of Kazakhstan, to probes into physical and cultural forms of extinction, to legendary figures such as Pope Joan, Eurydice, Marie Laveau, and the American Housewife.

JOHNATHAN F. LEE is a digital sound artist and composer living in Tokyo and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Media Arts at Tamagawa University. His compositions encompass a variety of styles and formats, both instrumental and electroacoustic, with an emphasis on deconstructing connections between various distinctive layers of sound, often through the use of signal processing techniques.He received a doctorate in music composition (DMA) from Columbia University.

Described as “one of the transforming figures of early 21st century jazz,” by The Guardian (UK) and as a "dazzling saxophonist,” by The New York Times, Steve Lehman (b. New York City, 1978) is a composer, performer, educator, and scholar who works across a broad spectrum of experimental musical idioms. Lehman’s pieces for large orchestra and chamber ensembles have been performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), So Percussion, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, the JACK Quartet, the PRISM Saxophone Quartet, and the Talea Ensemble.

Jeffrey Lependorf is a composer and also a certified master of the shakuhachi, a traditional Japanese bamboo flute. He currently serves as Director of the Music Omi International Music Residency Program in upstate New York, and also serves as the shared Executive Director of two beloved literary organizations: Small Press Distribution and the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses.His music has been performed around the globe--literally, in fact: a recording of his Night Pond for solo shakuhachi was launched into space when the shuttle Atlantis took off on May 15, 1997 and remained for

Aenon Loo is the Director of Gallery Exit and White Cube in Hong Kong, an award-winning composer and co-founder of the HellHOT New Music Festival. He was awarded an Asian Cultural Council fellowship in 2001 to partake in the Aspen Music Festival. Aenon Loo graduated from the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in 2002, studying composition under Law Wing-fai and electronic music under Clarence Mak. He was given a full scholarship from Columbia University in 2002 to pursue a Doctor of Musical Arts (D.M.A.) degree in composition and electronic music. He received his D.M.A.

Alexandre Lunsqui is a composer, born in Sao Paulo, Brazil. After ten years based in New York City, he is back to Brazil as a Professor of Composition and Theory at the Universidade Estadual Paulista, UNESP. He studied at the University of Campinas (BM), University of Iowa (MA), Columbia University (DMA), and IRCAM (year-long cursus of composition and computer music). Music teachers include 'recordings of various kinds', Tristan Murail, Jose Augusto Mannis, Fred Lerdahl, Jeremy Dale-Roberts, among other artists/creators from various areas.

In the earlier stages of his career, Ecuadorian-born composer Diego Luzuriaga was known for his concert pieces influenced by European spectral music; more recently, he has turned to the rhythmic and modal musical traditions of the Andes for his inspiration, often combining the two approaches. Large part of his output has been vocal music (song cycles, cantatas, an opera), including popular songs drawing from the rich songwriting traditions of Latin America.

Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis is Professor and Director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas. She recently won the Wallace Berry Award from the Society for Music Theory for On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind (Oxford University Press, 2013). Her research approaches music from the perspective of cognitive science. She is interested in the interface between musical structure and engagement, especially in listeners without formal training, and especially as it occurs dynamically across the course of the listening experience.

After completing his doctorate at Columbia University in New York, French-born American musician Wade Matthews moved to Madrid and became active on the international improv scene. Drawing on his work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (His doctoral dissertation was on improvisation guided by electronic sounds) he approached the bass clarinet and alto flute as "acoustic synthesizers," rethinking their sonic possibilities, phrasing, and relation to breath in a musical language based on real-time creation.

Jonathan N. Middleton is a composer based in Spokane, and a Professor of Theory and Composition at Eastern Washington University, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in composition, theory, orchestration, and music informatics. His recent commissions cover a wide range of instrumentation that includes full orchestra, solo performers, and mobile phones.Since 2004 his works have been inspired by sources found in nature and numbers (redwoods, fish, mountain ranges, Phi, Fibonacci numbers, and harmonograms).

Alex Mincek is a New York-based composer and performer. He studied composition with Tristan Murail and Fred Lerdahl at Columbia University (DMA) and with Nils Vigeland at the Manhattan School of Music (MA). He is currently the saxophonist, bass clarinetist, and artistic director of the Wet Ink Ensemble, a group dedicated to contemporary music, which he founded in 1998.

Hiroya Miura, a native of Sendai, Japan, has been active as a composer and performer in North America. He holds a D.M.A. degree from Columbia University, and he is associate professor of music at Bates College, where he teaches music theory and composition, and directs the college orchestra.

Gustavo Moretto holds a DMA in Composition from Columbia University, Bachelors Degree from The New England Conservatory and has been a professor in charge of the instrumental program at La Guardia Community College in New York City since 1996.Honors Dr. Moretto has received include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Norton Stevens Fellowship at the MacDowell Colony, ASCAP's Raymond Hubbell Music Scholarship Award, a Fellowship at the Composer's Conference at Wellesley College, and a Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation sponsorship at Yaddo.

Ashley Nail received her DMA in Composition from Columbia in 2014. She was appointed Core Postdoctoral Lecturer in Music Humanities at Columbia University for 2014-2016.

Ashley Nail was born in Fort Worth, Texas. She received her master’s degree from the University of Minnesota, where she studied with Noel Zahler and Doug Geers. She has studied with Fred Lerdahl, Tristan Murail, and Fabien Lévy at Columbia. Her works have been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, the Zeitgeist new music ensemble, JACK Quartet, Daedalus Quartet, ICE, Janus Trio, Yarn/Wire, and others.

DUNCAN NEILSON is the Composer-in-Residence for the Portland Chamber Orchestra in Portland, Oregon, and recently premiered a new multi-arts project for the orchestra entitled The Monster, a retelling of Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, from the Monster's point of view.In 2013, Duncan is a professor at Lewis and Clark College and Concordia University Portland. He works as a freelance composer, and has taught on the music faculty at Columbia University, the College of William and Mary, and at the Hoff-Barthelson School of Music in New York.

Composer/guitarist Richard Nelson is a Professor of Music and head of the Sonic Arts and Composition Concentration at the University of Maine at Augusta. He is recognized for his skillful and original integrations of contemporary classical and jazz composition and performance practices. His works have been performed by ensembles such as ALEA III, the Charleston Symphony Orchestra, the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra, and Speculum Musicae, at venues including the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Miller Theater, the University of Cape Town (South Africa), and numerous other U.S.

Pablo Ortiz is the Jan and Beta Popper Professor of Music at the University of California, Davis. Prizes and commissions include a Fromm in 1992, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1993, and the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996. In 1997 and 1998, Ortiz was commissioned two chamber operas, Parodia and Una voz en el viento, by the Centro Experimental Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires.

Daniel Palkowski is a composer and digital sound and electronic music specialist. Related professional skills include: sound designer, professor of composition, music theory, electronic music, consultant in music,audio, video software, recording engineer, audio editor, synthesist-pianist, editor, web caster, and painter.He received his Doctor of Musical Arts from Columbia University in 1992, with the dissertation: Views of Time (score), and Views of Time: An Analytical and Philosophical Commentary (Thesis).

Swedish composer Mika Pelo writes music for soloists, chamber ensembles, and orchestras, with or without electronics. He holds a doctorate in composition from Columbia University and is currently associate professor of composition at UC Davis.

Gary Philo serves on the board of the League of Composers/ISCM, is a member of the American Composers Alliance, Association for the Promotion of New Music, and BMI, and was a founding member of Composers in Red Sneakers, a Boston-based composers cooperative that produces concerts of their works and the works of other composers. Current projects include new works for Loadbang, and Emily Kalish.

Kurt Phinney is a Tenor and Chorus Manager with the Metropolitan Opera, which he joined in 1994.He holds a D.M.A., and M.A. from Columbia, and a B. Mus. Cum Laude from the University of Massachusetts.Career Highlights include: ASCAP Young Composers Award, 1988; Music Theory Faculty member: Columbia University, Metropolitan State College of Denver, Performer with: Musica Sacra, New York Choral Artists, New York Virtuoso Singers Bio courtesy of the Met Opera.

Sam Pluta is a New York City-based composer, laptop improviser, electronics performer, and sound artist. He is the Technical Director for the Wet Ink Ensemble, a group for whom he is a member composer as well as principal electronics performer. As a performer of chamber music with Wet Ink and other groups, in addition to his own works, Sam has performed and premiered works by Peter Ablinger, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Katharina Rosenberger, George Lewis, Ben Hackbarth, Alvin Lucier, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Alex Mincek, Kate Soper, and Eric Wubbels among others.

Timothy Polashek is an Assistant Professor of Music at Transylvania University in Lexington Kentucky. Dr. Polashek's compositions have been performed in Hong Kong, Brazil, Moscow, and other European countries, including international festivals such as the International Computer Music Conference, International Intermedia Festival, and the Icelandic Festival of Electronic Arts.Timothy Polashek writes in a variety of media and styles, including vocal, instrumental, electro-acoustic music, text/sound compositions, and interactive performance systems.

Core Lecturer, Music Humanities

Matthew Ricketts (b. 1986) is a Canadian composer based in NYC. He earned his undergraduate degree at McGill University's Schulich School of Music (Honours Composition, Theory), studying with Chris Paul Harman, Brian Cherney and John Rea. In 2017, he completed his DMA in Composition at Columbia, where he studied with George Lewis and Fred Lerdahl. He is a Core Lecturer in Music Humanities at Columbia.

Thanassis Rikakis is Vice Provost for Design, Arts and Technology at Carnegie Mellon University. He serves as a full professor in the Schools of Design and Music and holds a courtesy appointment in the Biomedical Engineering Department. His research and creative work are in the areas of experiential media, mixed reality rehabilitation, interdisciplinary education and computer music.As Vice Provost, Rikakis' charge is to facilitate the growth of the many existing synergies among design, arts and technology - each term broadly conceived - as well as to create opportunities for new ones.

Katharina Rosenberger, born in Zurich, holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition from Columbia University, under the mentorship of Tristan Murail. Katharina holds the position of Associate Professor in Composition at the Department of Music, University of California, San Diego.Much of her work manifests in a transdisciplinary context and is bound to confront traditional performance practice in terms of how sound is produced, heard and seen.

MICHAEL S. ROTHKOPF is a Professor of Composition, Music Technology and Graduate Studies at University of North Carolina School of the Arts.Dr. Rothkopf is a composer of over 45 works of chamber, electronic, orchestral and vocal music. His compositions have been noted for their "remarkable sensuousness" and their evocative ability to create a "sense of time and occasion." He has focused on creating interactive music involving digital technology and artificial intelligence as part of the compositional design.Published by American Composers Editions, Dr.

The American composer Steven Sacco was born in Brooklyn, New York. A composition and theory faculty member and past department co-chair at the Mannes College of Music in New York City, Sacco also teaches at Midland School in New Jersey and has taught at Rutgers University, Newark and at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Purchase.His work is performed internationally by some of today's leading soloists and ensembles.

Oliver Schneller is a composer and, in 2014, a faculty member at Internationalen Ferienkursen fur Neue Musik, Darmstadt.Schneller grew up in Africa, Europe and Asia and studied in Germany and the USA. After completing a MA in political science and musicology at the University of Bonn he worked for the Goethe Institute in Kathmandu, Nepal (1990-91) on a project to support and sustain local forms of traditional musical practice.

Sophia Serghi is the Professor of Music at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. Serghi studied with Vincent McDermott at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon from 1990-94, where she earned her BA cum laude, and then with George Edwards, Jonathan D. Kramer and Fred Lerdahl at Columbia University from 1994-98, where she earned her MA and DMA. She also attended the Aspen Music Festival in 1992-93, where she studied with George Tsontakis, and the Oregon Bach Festival in 1995-96, where she studied with John Harbison, Robert Kyr and Judith Weir.

Jeff Snyder is a composer, improviser and instrument-designer living in Princeton, New Jersey, and active in the New York City area.

As founder and lead designer of Snyderphonics, Jeff designs and builds unusual electronic musical instruments. His creations include the Manta, which is played by over 150 musicians around the world; the JD-1 Keyboard/Sequencer, which was commissioned as a specialty controller for Buchla synthesizers; and the custom analog modular synthesizer on which he regularly performs.

Kate Soper is a Professor of Music at Smith College as well as a composer, performer, and writer whose work explores the integration of drama and rhetoric into musical structure, the slippery continuums of expressivity, intelligibility and sense, and the wonderfully treacherous landscape of the human voice.

Tyshawn Sorey completed his DMA in Composition in 2017. In fall 2017 he became Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University. Sorey is an active composer, performer, educator, and scholar who works across an extensive range of musical idioms.

Sandra Sprecher is the Artistic Director of The Firehouse Space in Brooklyn and Owner and Curator of DENSITY 21.5. She is also a Sound Design for theater and film productions, and a freelance music copying and post production film editing. She does extensive solo and ensemble performance including the traditional classical repertoire with and a strong concentration on the music of the 20th Century. She holds a DMA in Composition from Columbia University, an M.M.

New Zealand born composer Matthew Suttor is the Director of the Laurie Beechman Center for Theatrical Sound Design and Music at Yale School of Drama. A Fulbright Scholar and doctoral graduate of Columbia University Suttor's recent work includes Don Juan in Prague, a collaboration with director David Chambers for the Bard SummerScape Festival in 2003, and in 2006 at the Mozart Prague Festival, the Guggenheim Works and Process series, and the BAM Next Wave Festival. Together with sound designer Daniel Baker he founded the Broken Chord Collective.

Johan Tallgren is an active writer and contributor on the musical scene; he has been artistic director of the Musica nova festival in Helsinki and is at the moment the artistic director of the Time of Music festival in Viitasaari. He follows in the unsentimental footsteps of his teacher Brian Ferneyhough. Kimmo Korhonen describes his output as “polished, bright and complex Modernist works”. He has mainly written instrumental music, and his translucent sound ideal is often apparent in instrumental combinations such as soprano, oboe and vibraphone.

Todd Tarantino is a New York City based composer. He is is currently the Executive Director of MATA, the festival of music by young and emerging composers, and has taught music theory at the Manhattan School of Music. At Columbia University, he teaches music theory, history and aural skills. His principal composition teachers include John Luther Adams, Fred Lerdahl, Stephen Siegel and Jonathan Kramer.

Adjunct Assistant Professor

Marcelo Toledo is a freelance composer and adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at Columbia University. Toledo's particular interest in music notation and visual representation of sounds led to he exhibition SOUND OBJECT in New York 2004, music, scores and drawings curated by the Dean of the Columbia University School of the Arts, Bruce Ferguson.In 2005-2006 Toledo was the New York composition mentor of the intercultural project Global Interplay organized by "Musik der Jahrhunderte" for the ISCM World Music Days.

A composer with a genuine international trajectory, Christopher Trapani maintains an active career in the United States, the United Kingdom, and in Continental Europe. Commissions have come from the BBC, the JACK Quartet, and Radio France, and his works have been recently heard at Carnegie Hall, the Southbank Centre, IRCAM, and Wigmore Hall.

Jason is a director of engineering at YP Mobile Labs, responsible for wrangling dozens of servers running a codebase he wrote to evaluate, buy, then serve ads on mobile applications; he manages a team of talented engineers that works to improve that codebase, while optimizing performance for thousands of mobile display campaigns; and, he is also responsible for leading the charge in building next-generation products with big data for marketers of all sizes and budgets. Jason is often a speaker and panelist on mobile advertising, location and privacy, and digital creativity.

Sean Varah is a composer, cellist, and entrepreneur.Raised in Vancouver, Canada, he studied cello with Judith Fraser at the Vancouver Academy of Music, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi at the University of Western Ontario, and Eric Wilson, University of British Columbia. He holds degrees from Stanford and Columbia University, where he received his doctorate of musical arts.

Carl Voss is an American composer of mostly orchestral and chamber works that have been performed in Europe and North America.Dr. Voss began lessons in violin at age three and later studied piano before beginning lessons in viola at age 14. He studied music theory, piano, solfege, and viola at the MacPhail Center for Music in Minneapolis from 1987-90 and composition with Bernard Rands at Harvard University, where he earned his BA summa cum laude in 1994.

Dr. James Walsh is an Instructor of Music Theory and Electronic Music at Loyola University in New Orleans. He is the vice president of the Guild of Composers (New York City). In addition to writing concert works, he has scored prize-winning films and videos. His compositions have been published by the Association for the Promotion of New Music. Walsh is also a jazz performer who tours internationally. He has been with the Loyola College of Music faculty since 1996.Bio courtesy of his faculty page.

Alumna (DMA 2012)

Dr. Wanner is a Professor of Music at Los Angeles City College (LACC), where he has taught since 2001. He was Chair of the Music Department from 2004-13, served as the Chair of Department Chairs for five years, and was the President of the Music Association of California Community Colleges (MACCC) from 2010-12. He is currently the Faculty Accreditation Co-Chair for LACC.Dr.

Eric Wubbels is a composer, pianist, and Executive Director of the Wet Ink Ensemble, a New York collective devoted to creating, promoting, and organizing adventurous contemporary music.

Wubbels's music has been performed throughout Europe, Asia and the U.S., by groups such as the Wet Ink Ensemble, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, ICE, Yarn/Wire, Ensemble Linea, Talea Ensemble, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and the Mivos Quartet, and featured on festivals including the Zurich Tage für Neue Musik (2013), Metz Festival (2014), and MATA Festival (2012).

Robert Alan Yekovich became the fifth dean of the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in 2003. He is also the Elma Schneider Professor of Music at the university.After receiving a bachelor's and master's of music in 1978 and 1980 at the University of Denver, Yekovich earned doctorate at Columbia University. He has held teaching positions at Columbia University, Connecticut College, the North Carolina School of the Arts and the University of Denver.In 1991, he became dean of music at the North Carolina School of the Arts (NCSA) at the University of North Carolina. During his time

Nina Young is Assistant Professor of Composition and Director of the Electronic Music Studios at the Butler School of Music at The University of Texas at Austin. Previously, she was Assistant Professor in the Department of the Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She completed the DMA program in Composition at Columbia in 2016. Prior to coming to Columbia, Nina received a Master's in Music Composition from McGill University's Schulich School of Music studying under composer Sean Ferguson.

Zhou Long won a Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2011. He is internationally recognized for creating a unique body of music that brings together the aesthetic concepts and musical elements of East and West. Deeply grounded in the entire spectrum of his Chinese heritage, including folk, philosophical, and spiritual ideals, he is a pioneer in transferring the idiomatic sounds and techniques of ancient Chinese musical traditions to modern Western instruments and ensembles.

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